


Puppies and Peaches and Plums

by SabbyStarlight



Category: The Magicians
Genre: Fluff, It becomes Queliot's puppy, M/M, Spoiler Alert - Freeform, Still fixing Season 4's plot holes, This time it's about Kady's puppy, What a never ending job, queliot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 08:15:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19422043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SabbyStarlight/pseuds/SabbyStarlight
Summary: "So help me, if I have somehow stumbled into some Hedge Witch sex toy exchange..."  Eliot sighed.  Whatever he had been expecting, it was certainly not the squirming, though admittedly adorable, puppy Bailey placed in his unexpecting arms.  The puppy's little claws scrambled for a moment against his satin robe before settling contentedly, resting her head in the crook of his elbow.  "Seriously?"





	Puppies and Peaches and Plums

**Author's Note:**

> So when I was writing And If I Know You At All, I Know You've Gone Too Far I had this whole list of all the Season 4 plot holes and screw ups and problems I had with the writing of that season. I tried to fit as many of them into that fic as I could to correct them, but it just wasn't possible to touch on each of them. The one that kept bothering me though, even long after that fic was finished, was Kady's puppy. I just couldn't find a way to tie it into the happy little canon I had created so this became a super random, fluffy, one-shot. You do not, in any way, have to read the aforementioned fic to understand this one. This is just pure, self-indulgent, happy fluff that dives a teensy tiny bit into an El character study somewhere in the middle. Whoops. Guess my hand slipped. Anyway, on with the fic!

Eliot had just sat down at the kitchen counter and wrapped his hands around his freshly poured mug of coffee when a knock on the door echoed throughout the nearly empty apartment. He had left Quentin sound asleep in the bedroom they had claimed as their own and unless someone had come home last night, they had the place to themselves. He sat his coffee cup down with a heavy sigh and hesitantly went to answer the door. 

He wasn’t sure what to expect when he looked through the peephole but a tiny little blonde with a huge smile definitely wasn’t it. He pulled the chain, unlocked the magic wards, and opened the door. 

“Hi!” The young woman greeted, her smile growing even brighter. “I’m Bailey!” 

“Congratulations.” Eliot deadpanned. as he moved to shut the door in her face. 

"Wait!" She called, reaching out a sneaker-clad foot to block the door open. "I need to talk to Kady. I'm her landlord." 

"No... you're, like, twelve. And she's not here. Try again later." He went to shut the door again. 

"This can't wait." Bailey frowned. "See, she left something with me? A while ago? But the Baba Yaga says I can't keep it anymore." 

"Okay, seriously, I don't know what the fuck you are talking about," Eliot sighed, squeezing the bridge of his nose. "But whatever it is, I'm fairly certain I’m going to need coffee to understand it."

To his dismay, Bailey laughed. "You're funny. I'm glad your back instead of that monster. That dude was way creepy. No sense of humor and he lacked serious regard for personal hygiene." 

"Quentin?" Eliot called desperately over his shoulder in the general direction of their bedroom, officially concerned. "Quentin, I have so many questions." 

"Anyway," Bailey continued without explanation. "Kady left it with me but I can't keep it. Problem is though, I called her, cause you know, landlord, I have access to her number and stuff like that, and she doesn't want it anymore. So, tag, I guess? It's your's now?" 

Eliot just stared at her as she kept talking, seemingly unphased by his confusion, as she reached down to the floor near her feet and s she reached down to the floor near her feet and started rifling through the large canvas bag propped against the wall. 

"So help me, if I have somehow stumbled into some Hedge Witch sex toy exchange..." Eliot sighed. Whatever he had been expecting, it was certainly not the squirming, though admittedly adorable, puppy Bailey placed in his unexpecting arms. The puppy's little claws scrambled for a moment against his satin robe before settling contentedly, resting her head in the crook of his elbow. "Seriously?" 

"Again, tell Kady I'm sorry I couldn't keep her, but she seems to like you!" Bailey declared with a smile, setting the bag, that Eliot could now see was filled nearly to the brim with brightly colored puppy supplies, down at his feet. "You're going to love her, I promise." And without any more explanation, Bailey waved goodbye with a quick little twirl of her fingers and shut the door behind her. 

"Seriously?" Eliot whispered down to the puppy in his arms. "What the actual fuck?" She just lifted her head up from his arm and tried to lick at his face. “Q?” Eliot called once he had locked the door behind him, arms full of the now apparently hyper puppy. “Quentin!” 

“What's wrong?” Quentin asked around a yawn as he stumbled his way down the stairs, clearly still half asleep, pulling a shirt on over plaid pajama bottoms. Any other morning Eliot would have stopped to appreciate the view, but he was too distracted by the dog in his arms. 

“What's wrong, is that, amongst other things that happened while I was… away, Kady got, and then promptly forgot about, a puppy. This puppy,” he held the dog away from his body and out towards Quentin with both hands, watching as her tail started wagging at the premise of a new friend. “To be exact and apparently we are now in charge of finding her a new home.” 

“Great.” Quentin rolled his eyes. “Why does this not surprise me? I guess we, um, I don't know, lock it in the bathroom until we find a shelter to take it?” 

“Her,” Eliot corrected, tucking the dog back safely against his chest, eyebrows knitting together in a frown. “And seriously, Q? That’s your solution? Drop her off at the nearest pound?”

“Shelter, but, yeah? Well, I mean, we find a no-kill one obviously.” Quentin ran a hand through his sleep-mussed hair in confusion. “What was your plan? Keep it?” 

“Her,” Eliot corrected again, kicking the bag full of dog supplies out of the middle of the floor before he dropped down on the couch across the room. The puppy instantly settling beside him, little head resting on his leg while he ran a hand over her ears. “She’s a girl. And, I don’t know…” He hesitated. “Maybe? Is that so crazy?” 

“A dog?” Quentin asked, bare feet scuffing across the hardwood floors until he was seated on the coffee table across from Eliot, their knees nearly touching. “I mean, it’s a little bit out of nowhere, El. And come on, after all the crazy shit we just came through? We’re, what, just gonna adopt a dog?”

“We raised a son, Q.” Eliot pointed out dryly, falling back on his tried and true response of covering emotion with humor. “I don’t think a dog will be that big of a challenge.” 

“You’re serious.” Quentin realized then, seeing right through Eliot’s facade. “You really wanna keep her?” 

“The timing’s far from ideal,” Eliot agreed with a sigh. “Obviously we can’t just crash here at Kady’s apartment forever. We have a country to help Fen and Margo run and we’ll want to go back to school eventually. But we kinda owe the Physical Kids a new mascot and… why not?”

“You just never struck me as a pet kinda person,” Quentin admitted. “And now you’re wanting a dog? A, like, piss on the carpet, sheds everywhere, chews on your fancy new Italian shoes, dog.” 

“Because scooping cat litter is so much more glamorous?” Eliot teased, picking up the puppy, who was nearly asleep, and reaching her to Quentin. 

He fumbled with her in his clumsy, unsure hands, for a moment until she settled contently against his chest and he couldn’t help but smile. “She is pretty cute,” Quentin admitted, smiling down at her. 

“She really is,” Eliot agreed. “C’ mon Q, I’m not going to beg, or whatever, but let’s keep her. Haven’t you always wanted a dog?”

“Honestly? No.” Quentin shrugged, curiously examining the pads on the bottom of the puppy’s tiny front paws. 

“Well, I have.” Eliot decided. “I want to keep her.” 

“You grew up on a farm, El.” Quentin laughed, shaking his head fondly. “I’m sure you’ve had your fair share of pets, dogs included.”

“Animals, yes.” Eliot agreed, eyes darkening like they always did when someone brought up his life in Indiana. “Pets? Hell no.” 

“Seriously?” Quentin asked, all traces of lightheartedness instantly leaving his voice. 

Eliot sighed, standing up and brushing his palms across his pajama bottoms. He walked back to the door, rifling through the bag on the floor for a few silent moments before finding a little stuffed elephant chew toy. He paused to refill his abandoned mug with fresh coffee, pouring a second one for Quentin, before returning to the sofa. 

He took the puppy from Quentin, setting her on the floor at his feet with the toy, and took a long drink of his coffee before deciding that he had stalled enough. “Do you know what farm animals are called, Quentin?” He asked softly. 

“City boy, remember?” Quentin replied. “The closest I came to a farm was when we took a field trip to one in the fourth grade. An alpaca spit on me.” 

“Alpacas don’t spit.” Eliot corrected automatically. “It must have been a llama. Anyway, that’s irrelevant. Livestock. Farm animals are livestock. Live. Stock. That’s it, they are just living, breathing, money shares. That wasn’t a real farm, Q. That you went to. I bet the animals were all perfectly groomed, standing there behind their pristine white fences. And you got to like, help milk a goat or something before picking some tomatoes from the garden. Sound right?” 

Quentin nodded. 

Eliot huffed a laugh. “And then someone in too-clean bibbed overalls and a straw hat brought out an armful of red and white checked picnic blankets and you got to sit under an apple tree and eat a BLT made from the tomatoes you had just picked?” 

“I mean, it’s been a while but yeah, that sounds about right.” Quentin agreed, not quite understanding where Eliot was headed with this conversation but he had learned long ago that if El was willing to talk about his childhood it was best to not ask too many questions or he would lock up again. 

“See they draw all the attention to the tomatoes and hope nobody thinks to ask where the bacon comes from. Wouldn’t want to ruin some little nine-year-old kid’s Charlotte’s Web fantasy.” Eliot rolled his eyes. “When you grow up on a farm, Q, and I mean a real farm, not some glorified petting zoo, you learn really quickly not to get attached to the animals there.” 

Quentin’s eyes shifted down to the little puppy contentedly playing in the floor. “I get that, but there had to be pets.” 

“If it don’t earn it’s keep it ain’t worth having.” Eliot’s voice dropped into a warped twang. “My dad used to say that all the time. And trust me, he meant it. Sure we had dogs; guard dogs, herding dogs, hunting dogs. They were either tied up or in the field and were never allowed past the front porch and they knew it. There were never fewer than three barn cats on the place but they were so feral you couldn’t pet them, let alone pick them up. Did you know Cat Scratch Fever is a real thing? Farming’s all about the money, Q, at the end of the day. It’s a hard way to make a living and you have to be practical about it. A chicken stops laying eggs? It becomes Sunday dinner. Same with a cow that stops producing milk. It’s going to feed you one way or another, otherwise, there’s no point in you feeding it.” 

“No wonder you got the hell out of there,” Quentin said softlly, reaching out and wrapping his hand around Eliot’s. 

He shrugged, taking another drink of his coffee. “I mean, the rampant homophobia and lack of unfried food were big deciding factors too, don’t get me wrong. It’s just life. And when that’s how you provide for your family you have to be ruthless about it.” 

“I don’t know the first thing about taking care of a puppy,” Quentin warned.

You just spent the last few months of your life defeating a monster that the literal gods of the world were terrified of." Eliot reminded with a wry grin. "And somehow managed to do so without letting him damage the body he was inhabiting. And when the tole that took on you mentally finally caught up with you, I marched myself down to the Underworld and petitioned Hades himself to bring you back to me. To give us a chance. If we can survive that, Q, I think we can manage to take care of a little puppy." 

"Okay," Quentin said finally, shaking his head, not quite believing what he had just agreed to. "Let's keep her." 

"Thank you." Eliot leaned forward, pressing a quick kiss to Quentin's lips. "I'm not going to say you won't regret this, because I'm certain there will be moments you will absolutely hate yourself for agreeing to this, but the positives will outweigh the bad." 

"It's a good thing you're cute," Quentin said with a smile, setting his nearly empty coffee cup down on the table and picking up the little dog, sitting down beside Eliot on the sofa. 

"I tend to think of myself as more dashingly handsome, but I'll take cute. A compliment's a compliment." Eliot said, slowly turning the little purple collar around the puppy's neck around, searching for a nametag. 

"Oh, I was talking about the dog." Quentin teased, ignoring the gentle thwack to the back of his head from Eliot's hand. "Did Bailey say if she had a name yet?" 

"Nope," Eliot frowned. "And there's nothing on her collar. So I guess we get to choose." 

"Gerald Two." Quentin declared, beaming with pride until Eliot sent him a withering glare. "What? Gerald was Cancer Puppy’s name and you said we owed the PK Kids a new mascot!" 

"You are officially banned from nominating names." Eliot laughed, taking another drink of his coffee. "I'll just get some ideas from Bambi when she comes back in a few days." 

"Wait," Quentin began, his eyebrows making that adorable little scrunched up shape they took when he had an idea. "You know how Margo and Julia have..." 

"Nope," Eliot cut him off. "No more name suggestions from you."   
"Just hear me out," Quentin smiled. "I think you'll like this one. You know how Margo and Julia have been teasing us ever since we got back?" 

"If I hear one more Orpheus and Eurydice joke I might just snap." Eliot warned. 

"Oh, come on, it's kinda funny. And I'm not like, an expert on Greek mythology or anything, but wasn't Orpheus Calliope's son? I don't know, it's kinda a pretty name."

"Calliope," Eliot repeated, smiling down at the puppy between them. "The Muse of epic poetry. A big name to live up to." 

"Callie, then." Quentin sighed. "I mean, all this started because of the gods, and after Persephone and you bargaining with Hades to bring me back, just seems like we've got a theme going." 

"Well, Callie," Eliot said, picking up the puppy and raising her to eye level. "What do you think?” 

If Callie had been a Fillorian talking animal, which she most certainly was not, she wouldn’t have even had time to answer because Penny and Josh suddenly blipped into the middle of the living room. 

“A dog?” Penny asked, rolling his eyes. “Come on y’all, some of us like to take naps on that couch and would really appreciate not waking up from them covered in dog hair.” 

“Cute!” Josh exclaimed, rushing over and taking the puppy from Eliot’s arms. “Finally, someone in this house who won’t complain about my cooking.” Already knowing where she belonged, Callie scrambled to escape from Josh’s hands and ran across the floor, nails clicking, back to Eliot and Quentin. 

Penny was in the kitchen making a fresh pot of coffee and Josh was laying in the floor trying to bribe Callie into leaving her close proximity to Quentin and Eliot with the toys Bailey had brought when the front door to the appartment swung open and Kady strode in, clearly having just returned from a hedge witch meeting, her arms overflowing with piles of old books. She glanced around the living room, now strewn with dog toys, eyes finally landing on Callie. “Seriously?” She asked, seemingly not recognizing the dog. “When did you two find time to get a dog?”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
